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GUEST: Scott Ritter, Former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, author of several books including Iraq Confidential, Target Iran, and Waging Peace

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter is an unlikely person to be offering advice for the antiwar movement. He is Republican who voted for George Bush in 2000. But ever since the Bush administration began making moves toward war in Iraq, Ritter has staunchly exposed the rhetoric from the White House as lies and propaganda. He has spent years observing the antiwar movement, who have hailed him as a truth teller in the struggle to end the Iraq war, and to prevent a war with Iran. Now, Ritter’s new book, Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement, candidly analyzes the weaknesses in progressive movements for peace and justice, and proposes that these movements seek guidance from sources they normally spurn. They need to do this, according to Ritter, by studying the “enemy” in order to learn the art of campaigning and of waging battles when necessary. Based on Sun Tsu’s The Art of War, and other approaches to waging war, Ritter suggests the antiwar movement wage peace with the same ferocity and strategy that pro-war and anti-social forces wage war.

Rough Transcript:

Sonali: Now rather than discuss how the anti-war movement is failing – because we have limited time here – let’s start with the assumption that it is failing simply because the war has continued unabated, and let’s define what you call the pro-war movement? Who are these pro-war movements, are we talking about the military, the Republican Party, the Bush Administration, or the religious right?

Ritter: I think we can say yes to all of the above. I think one of the things, we go back, we can re-examine Dwight Eisenhower’s speech that he made when he was president warning about the military-industrial complex. He had thrown in an additional term there, the military-industrial-congressional complex, and he was pressured by Congress to remove that. Now when you throw in the congressional complex, what you’re saying is the system is corrupt because what is the congressional complex? Congress is supposed to be the representatives of the people, but even at that time it was recognized that Congress was being corrupted by special interests, special interests tied to the money making machinery of the military-industrial complex as opposed to, for instance, agriculture, heavy industry for legitimate civilian purposes. America had been captured by the forces of militarism, by the forces of war. This is the enemy, and when you start bringing in the money, now you have elements that exploit this for instance the religious right that uses the military-industrial complex as a vehicle of empowerment, so I think what we have to recognize is looking in the mirror most Americans have to acknowledge the enemy is us, ourselves, the system; and this is a daunting foe if you’re someone who is a proponent of peace and justice, but peace and justice is such a good cause that I don’t care how big the Goliath is, we need to be the David, willing to wage battle and take down this Goliath for the future of our children.

Sonali: Well, these forces are clearly much better funded, resourced, and certainly better organized than the anti-war movement, and I think that’s the basis for your book. I think you make a very important point in the book about the number of people in this country who are wanting the war to end. The anti-war movement routinely cites that about two-thirds of this country wants this war to end, but does that mean that they are philosophically opposed to the Iraq war, and you say, no they’re not, they’re mainstream Americans who don’t necessarily have that much in common with the anti-war movement.

Ritter: Well, what they have in common is the fact that they reject this war, but the anti-war movement rejects the war because they reject war in general. I think the anti-war movement recognizes that war is not the answer whereas the majority of Americans that are now siding with the anti-war movement on Iraq are there not because they reject war, but because they reject losing. See they’re against the war in Iraq because we’re not winning, we’re not prevailing. This would be a completely different political dynamic if we were actually succeeding in Iraq, if our troops were not being resisted as efficiently as they are by the insurgency in Iraq. If this was a cakewalk, there would be fewer Americans examining this from a moral genuine prerogative. Was this a just war? Americans, most of them don’t care. Now we’re starting to define the problem because see we see that we can attract people to the anti-war cause, but what we need to do is come up with strategies, methodologies, tactics that get them into the tent with us, and then we have to change their perspective so that it’s not just get out of Iraq, but how about don’t go into Iran. That would be a good one.

Sonali: Now let’s talk about a couple of the ways in which you suggest that we broaden the movement. One is to base our approach on the US Constitution as a document, and the other is what you call the fire fighter standard. So talk about both of those, first the Constitution. Why the Constitution, and is that not something that is a given that the anti-war movement would be upholding or wanting to uphold the US Constitution?

Ritter: Well, one would hope it’s a given, not only for the anti-war movement, but for all Americans. You know a key element in creating a movement, not only in terms of defining a movement such as defining your enemy . . . I was an intelligence officer, and you know one of the tools that we use is to define our enemy’s center of gravity – what makes them tick – and then you take that on. You deconstruct that, you take that down, and in doing so you destroy your enemy. What is the peace movement’s center of gravity? What makes the peace movement tick? What is its heart and soul? Now people can quote Gandhi, they can quote Martin Luther King, but you know in America this is a battle of numbers, it’s about democracy. We have to win over mainstream American, and I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to get most Americans to just jump up and embrace Gandhi. They will embrace the Constitution, they will embrace the rule of law. And you say it should be natural for the peace movement. I would challenge the peace movement today to honestly answer the question, how many of you have read the Constitution? You claim to be a proponent of it. How can you be a proponent of something you haven’t read, you can’t comprehend, you don’t understand. Let’s make the Constitution a living document. Let’s make it the heart and soul of the movement because from the Constitution comes the rule of law, from the rule of law comes justice, and from justice comes peace. I think that’s why we speak of peace and justice as linked, but you can’t have peace and justice without the rule of law, and the Constitution gives us the rule of law. Now we talk about the fire-fighter standard. Everything I just said is what the fire fighter . . . like the peace and justice movement is a progressive movement. They sit there and I applaud them for their ability to deconstruct the ails of society. They’re not blind to the reality of what’s going on out there – about the homeless, about drugs, about single mothers, and these problems. You know what other element of society is fully cognizant of this – the fire fighters. They know darn well what’s going on in their society. They respond to these problems twenty-four seven, so right off the bat you have an ally who understands where you’re coming from. They comprehend, they get it, but they happen to be quite conservative, so if you can bring these conservative fire fighters who are on your side on so many issues to your cause, you can bring the rest of America. So that’s why I talk about the fire fighter standard. You will know you are doing something right in the peace and justice movement, when you’ve got fire-fighters standing side by side; and I cite the example of Seattle, Washington and the WTO thing. When the mayor of Washington ordered the fire fighters to turn the hoses on the demonstrators to disperse, the fire fighters refused. They stood side by side, so you had this weird photograph of some punk-rocked up, earring, tattooed, you know, lefty – I don’t know, I’m not saying everybody’s that way – and this crew-cut, thick-armed, burly-necked fire-fighter, standing side by side together. And isn’t that what we’re supposed to be about, standing side by side together without a stereotype of what is an American. An American isn’t defined by a physical appearance, an American is defined by what’s in your heart, especially if what’s in your heart is tied to the document that defines who we are and what we are as a nation – the Constitution. That’s why I put it in as Appendix A to this book, so you read the book and you say, well the Constitution, you don’t have an excuse to say you don’t have immediate access to it. It’s right there, read it.

Sonali: Now I have to say that when you use words like ‘the art of war for the anti-war movement,’ and you’ve probably come across this a lot in the peace and justice movement, people balk. They think you know if we use the same approaches as the war fighters, how then are we any better than them; so justify why you think we need to be thinking about this struggle to end war as a war itself that we are fighting and think of ourselves as warriors.

Ritter: Well again, the last thing I’m proposing is violence. I think I’ve made it clear right up front in this book that this is a book designed to terminate violence as a solution and to promote peace and justice, but for a second if anybody in the peace and justice movement, the anti-war movement, the progressive movement – whatever label we want to put on this thing – believes that they’re not in conflict with an ideological opponent who seeks to destroy them, I think they live in la-la land. This is not a process where victory can be achieved by holding hands, lighting candles, and singing kum-ba-yah. We are in conflict, a life and death struggle with forces that are proponents of armed military intervention, so the first thing I ask people to recognize is that we already are in conflict. Whether you like it or not, it is a reality. So if we are in conflict, and we recognize that, we better use the tools that are known to succeed in conflict. Again, not the tools of sticking a bayonet in somebody’s gut and twisting it, I’m talking about the tools of organization, the tools of efficiency, the tools that allow you to have strategies that are defined, that link to methodologies, operations that have tactics that are all linked together. People say demonstration. Is it a tactic, is it a strategy? It’s nothing unless it’s linked to an overall approach to accomplish an final objective, and this is what I’m talking about – the art of war. Sun Tzu spoke of the Cheng and the Chi – wow, little Kung fu stuff – but it’s important because the other person I quote and I bring up is the concept of John Boyd, the decision-making cycle, the OODA Loop, efficiency of operations. Chen Chi is act, react. Is the peace movement actually evaluating the pro-war movement, and saying okay we’re going to do something deliberately to get an action from the pro-war movement that we have predicted, therefore we have the next step planned so when they react to us we keep going, and now we’ve made our loop tighter. We’re making decisions quicker. Are they better funded? You’re darn right they’re better funded, but if we’re more efficient, we make our dollar go more. Imagine how much money, it should make you sick, how much money the peace and justice movement has wasted – wasted through inefficiency of operations. If you want to take on the well-funded pro-war movement, you’ve got to become more efficient, and this is why the art of war is so important because the art of war gives you the tools that enable you to be efficient in conflict; and whether you like it or not, we are in a life and death ideological struggle right now for the heart and soul of America, and I want this side – the peace and justice side – to win.

Sonali: Let’s analyze what appeared as a victory for the anti-war movement in recent years using your approach, and you talk about this in your book, which was the Camp Casey issue where Cindy Sheehan went down to Crawford, Texas and really had the attention of the world for a few days there – a very very important moment for the anti-war movement. What happened in your opinion? How do you analyze that moment in the anti-war movement?

Ritter: Well, first of all, it’s one of those things that when you speak about conflict – you know, you can’t predict everything. What you do is you have a system in place, and then when something occurs you’re able to recognize something is happening, and then you shift your resources to exploit that. The problem with Camp Casey is there was no system in place; Camp Casey occurred, and it was great. You know, Cindy Sheehan and I have had our differences and we continue to have our differences, but I applaud her, and I think she’s an icon of the anti-war movement for the stance she took at Crawford, the courage it took to be there and what she did, and you know what, she found the chink in the armor. She got in there and it was working. She had the media attention. How much money do you have to spend to get the media to give you as much attention as they gave Cindy Sheehan at that point in time, and then what happened is it just sort of went away. There was no follow up. You had this wonderful moment, you had this momentum coming in, you had people coming, resources, and it was so chaotic and without focus, without any structure that it dissipated. And then what’s worse in my mind is that Cindy Sheehan, this icon, was left hanging. She was not given the support she needed. The support she did get was unfocused. I mean, here’s a gold-star mother who has the heart and soul of mainstream America talking about what it’s like to be a grieving mom, to have a president dis you, and then she goes and stands side by side Hugo Chavez and bad-mouths the United States of America. Are you trying to win the hearts and soul of middle-America there Cindy Sheehan or are you deliberately trying to undermine any chance of bringing mainstream America to you. The peace movement let her down, and we just have to look at Cindy Sheehan today. She’s broken. She’s broken emotionally. She’s broken psychologically. She is broken financially. The anti-war movement used her as a pack-mule. They piled more and more and more and more on this wonderful lady until she broke, and today she had to withdraw. Is that how the right-wing treats it’s warriors. Paul Wolfowitz is going to be cast aside by the neo-conservative movement? Absolutely not. He’s a double failure. Huge failures as Deputy Secretary of Defense and as World Bank President, and yet they will take care of him. Somebody should be . . . one of these well-funded liberal elites in Hollywood should reach into their pocket book right now – they’ve made movies where they’ve made millions – and how about writing a check for eighty-thousand dollars to Cindy Sheehan, and saying Cindy, take a year sabbatical, recharge your batteries, but write us a study – and we’ll give you graduate students from Berkeley or whatever to help – but we need a study on Camp Casey. How did it happen? What was the dynamic there? What worked, what didn’t work? And provide a pamphlet for the anti-war movement to take a look at and say how do we replicate the success of Camp Casey, and how do we avoid the failures of Camp Casey. Camp Casey is a moment in time that the anti-war movement should find out how can we replicate this over and over and over again, and use it as a force of sustainment as opposed to a flash in the pan, a one time event that came and went and there’s no . . . cause it’s done now, whatever momentum existed with Camp Casey is gone, and it is not being recaptured by the peace movement. They’ve lost the gold-star mother moment.

Sonali: Let’s talk about some of the theory behind what you propose in your book, Waging Peace: The Art of War for The Anti-War Movement; and I think that you’re very much accurate when you say that most of the folks in the anti-war movement, and I count myself there, don’t necessarily think of long-term goals, the difference between strategy and tactics. How does one define or differentiate between strategy and tactics, and then the thing that keeps them together, the operations part of it?

Ritter: Well, it’s important. Strategy is your overall objectives. Alright, strategy isn’t the how, it’s the what. What are we trying to achieve; and an important part of strategy is the old KISS principle, Keep It Simple Silly. I won’t insult anybody with the other S word, being a former marine sometimes you know the harshness rubs in. You guys, you’re working on me, you’re succeeding. So Keep It Simple Silly, but the simplicity of operations . . . what is your goal? I talk about in the book . . . the right wing has boiled down to – and people have said this before – three things: guns, gods, and gays. So if I’m doing a debate, or if somebody in the peace movement’s doing a debate with a right-winger on Hannity and Colmes, and Hannity says hey what’s the right-wing say – guns, gods, and gays. Every American deserves guns, god is the center of our thing, and gays are destroying America – okay, wham, he’s done, he’s finished.

Sonali: It’s simple.

Ritter: It’s simple. Now they turn to the left, what do you got, and they pull out a seventeen-page manifesto, and they say well first we believe that you know all apples should fall from the tree naturally and never . . . that’s a nice thing, but they’re going on and finally well you’re out of time. They haven’t even gotten to the heart of it, so the strategy has to be simple. What is it you want to achieve? And you can’t achieve everything. Let’s just start off, right off the bat, give me one, two, three things. Now you’ve done it. How do you know you’re succeeding? What are the measures of success? Pick three things for each one of these points, one, two, three. This is how we know we’re succeeding. Now build an operation to determine how you measure this. And so now you have what you want to do, now you have the how, but it’s the big picture how, how we’re going to measure success, the number of people, etc. Now you break it down. How do we get the number of people over? These are your tactics. So you run your tactics. You say, we’re going to have a media campaign, we’re going to have a radio station, we’re going to have this, we’re going to do things to achieve this objective that’s linked to this. So that way, as you’re doing your radio programming, and you realize you’re not getting the measurables necessary, you say, we have to change our tactics because we’re not achieving our objective, and you have to do this over a period of time. This is where the campaign comes in. This is not a one-day battle, a two-day battle. This is something that has to occur over a given period of time. Campaigns have lasted days, weeks, months, years, and I think the peace and justice movement is looking at a decade long campaign if they want to truly seek a fundamental shift in the way Americans approach the issue of war and peace.

Sonali: One of the challenges, of course, within any organization, for anyone whose joined an activist organization, you know you have to sit through, you end up sitting through five hour, ten hour meetings, and everyone has a discussion. You criticize what you’ve basically identified as the concept of participatory democracy as proposed by the new left, and compare that to citizen participation which you say is a better way forward rather than everybody having a say in everything that people should be encouraged to have a stake in what happens, but not necessarily have a say in everything. This is also something that I think is a little bit controversial, you know, that people are either leaders or followers. It sounds very military, it sounds very top-down. Explain why it would help in your opinion the peace movement to use a strict hierarchical method of organizing rather than a horizontal, or what you call flat-line method.

Ritter: Well first of all, flat-line method doesn’t work. I think we’re just seeing that, I mean, people could debate me all they want about whether or not I’m right in saying that the anti-war movement is failing. But if you even acknowledge that it’s not succeeding, wild success, I think we’d have to say that the system of organization that’s being used is inefficient. I’ve talked about efficiency of operations. A five-hour meeting that gets you nothing is a waste of time, effort, and resources. Again, we’ve talked about money, the lack of money. If you’re burning your money up in organizational efforts that achieve nothing fundamentally at the end, it’s a waste of time. I didn’t say you’re either a follower or a leader, I said you can’t be a good leader without being a good follower, and you can’t be a good follower without being a good leader, but you can’t be both at the same time, and that there comes a point in time in a given operation that somebody has to be in charge just for the efficiency of the decision-making alone. Everybody needs to agree on what it is you stand for. That’s why I talk about a core element, the center of gravity. You agree on who we are, and what we are, and where we want to go, and everybody’s there; now everybody buys into that. I’m a citizen, I buy a stake, I’m a shareholder, but now once I’m a shareholder, I’m not the chief. I may have to be the driver, I may have to be the cook, I may have to be something else, and I shouldn’t be insulted by this because I realize that I’m part of an overall effort to achieve a sound, just objective at the end. But you have to organize this way if you’re going to succeed. The major labor movements that succeeded in America were not flat-line movements. The major labor movements that have succeeded around the world were not flat-line movements. At the end of the day there was a structure; there was organization. Somebody was in charge, and just because somebody’s in charge doesn’t mean that the person at the bottom is not relevant. If there is a disconnect between the people who are calling the shots and the people at the bottom, then you have a serious problem, but as long as everybody is true to the mission and everybody’s focused on mission accomplishment . . . and it doesn’t mean that the person at the top is at the top forever. I talk about incident command system. You know, one of the things I propose is . . . because you can’t be dismissive of participatory democracy, it’s one of the things that people are attracted to when they speak of the peace and justice movement. All I ask is that instead of viewing yourself as a constant flat-line, is that every once in a while when it comes time to make a difference – when the rubber meets the road, it’s conflict time – that you morph into a hierarchical system. That you have the ability to transform yourself, and say okay, today we have an operation going on – alright you are in charge, you are the incident commander, you’re the operations people, and you morph it down into a structure and things work efficiently. And when the operations done, you go back to flat-line where everybody’s going yay, we did great, good job; now you have the next operation, morph back into incident command. It doesn’t mean the same person is in charge, it means somebody’s in charge.

Special Thanks to Daniel Kolendowicz for transcribing this interview.